Office 365 for education - available now!

[CyberNerd]

Has anyone migrated from Google Apps to Live@Edu/Office365?

 

 

That would be insane. Fewer services, less disk space ?

[zag]

Has anyone migrated from Google Apps to Live@Edu/Office365?

 

I am going to be looking at doing this - probably wouldn't bother moving over the students existing mailboxes (give them new empty ones), but we would need to do the staff ones and I get the feeling it will be a painful experience!

 

It should be pretty easy, just give the staff new mailboxes and go round and shift over the emails.

[SYNACK]

That would be insane. Fewer services, less disk space ?

Better UI, better integration with existing internal stuff, can't you just get a t-shirt that says Google and Linux at all costs? I've got one for MS ;D

[SYNACK]

Has anyone migrated from Google Apps to Live@Edu/Office365?

 

I am going to be looking at doing this - probably wouldn't bother moving over the students existing mailboxes (give them new empty ones), but we would need to do the staff ones and I get the feeling it will be a painful experience!

I have done email migrations from imap to exchange with imapsync, you need to enable imap on live@edu which is temporary but can be done then have a Linux box with this and a user list to run through them. How To Migrate Mailboxes Between IMAP Servers With imapsync | HowtoForge - Linux Howtos and Tutorials worked well for me and freed the users from the usability crime that is squrielmail. I just used an Ubuntu vm as you only need it to run the migration.

Edited July 3, 2012 by SYNACK

[CyberNerd]

Better UI, better integration with existing internal stuff

 

If you'r already using Google docs, migrating to office 365 makes no sense - different, and less familiar UI, less integration with existing stuff.

[SYNACK]

There are even built in tools Migrate E-Mail from an IMAP Server with Windows PowerShell and Using Powershell to import contacts into Exchange and Outlook Live | Steve Goodman's Exchange Blog @CyberNerd they might like the upgrade from a glorified telnet session

[CyberNerd]

@CyberNerd they might like the upgrade from a glorified telnet session

 

Thats just rubbish. We have teachers here who are dropping MSOffice 2010 in their droves because of the better collaboration features in google docs.

[SYNACK]

Thats just rubbish. We have teachers here who are dropping MSOffice 2010 in their droves because of the better collaboration features in google docs.

 

Unfair comparison much, I'll bet that Office 2010 was not tied into a SharePoint site like 365 to offer the same or better collaboration features. 365 does that with both desktop apps and the online ones.

[GrumbleDook]

In the interest of keeping the thread on topic ... could a separate thread be raised to talk about the comparative analysis of Office365 and Google Apps for Education? I'm as guilty as the next person of generating this sort of thing into a circular argument but we could take it as read that any announcement of something from either offering will feed into the discussion instead?

[Progress]

Hi,

 

I've been looking at Live@Edu and set up an additional domain to test it on - All is wonderful in the world...Then when I go to login to the service at one of my Derbyshire schools.. I find EMBC have blocked it - Asked them about it and the possibility of unblocking it, and got a "not a chance" response.

I tried setting up Google Apps for Education and found it gets the same treatment - I understand that a lot of the "controllers" don't trust "the Cloud", but time for a reality check perhaps?

It will be fun when Office 365 gets going.

Anybody using the EMBC/LEA setup got anywhere with this?

[GrumbleDook]

Hi,

 

I've been looking at Live@Edu and set up an additional domain to test it on - All is wonderful in the world...Then when I go to login to the service at one of my Derbyshire schools.. I find EMBC have blocked it - Asked them about it and the possibility of unblocking it, and got a "not a chance" response.

I tried setting up Google Apps for Education and found it gets the same treatment - I understand that a lot of the "controllers" don't trust "the Cloud", but time for a reality check perhaps?

It will be fun when Office 365 gets going.

Anybody using the EMBC/LEA setup got anywhere with this?

 

It is available and running in a number of schools already within EMBC land. The answer you might have had is not 'no chance' but 'not on that filtering level or the way the filter is presently used / managed' ... do you have the same issue when logging on as different level users? Have you spoken to anyone at the LA? It might be worth reposting the question in the EMBC specific forum so that those schools in your area can give you more specific advice.

[Progress]

Thanks very much - I appreciate the response.

The support desk don't want us messing with the filtering levels at school level - I tried it through SUMS as far as user levels go, that didn't do much.

I do know that Derby City are about to run a field trial with Office 365 and Google Apps at "selected" schools - Microsoft I also know are involved with this.

I'll look at the EMBC forum tomorrow and see what turns up, thanks again.

[SYNACK]

Thanks very much - I appreciate the response.

The support desk don't want us messing with the filtering levels at school level - I tried it through SUMS as far as user levels go, that didn't do much.

I do know that Derby City are about to run a field trial with Office 365 and Google Apps at "selected" schools - Microsoft I also know are involved with this.

I'll look at the EMBC forum tomorrow and see what turns up, thanks again.

 

I had something similar with a local provider that locked out Microsoft stuff only, a good few stern words did eventually make them budge though.

[PiqueABoo]

Punching outbound holes through proxys/firewalls for things like this can be a complete PITA - the MS lists/ranges just for Live@Edu are rather big and they have been know to change. Office365 will add to that, especially Lync which might be problematic. I think it's best, in fact it's probably necessary, for it to be tackled centrally by some rocket scientist at the [RBC|Whatever] rather than have folk doing it at the school level.

[InterwebsGuy]

That would be insane. Fewer services, less disk space ?

Define insanity.

 

Google Apps isn't very popular here. Being a full Microsoft house would also be beneficial.

[InterwebsGuy]

Thanks for the responses re Google Apps migration to Office365, I will go off and have a good look at those options.

Really appreciated.

[CyberNerd]

Define insanity.

 

Google Apps isn't very popular here. Being a full Microsoft house would also be beneficial.

 

I just think it would be a massively backwards step if you have Google Apps already. When I asked about how Office 365 could replace MSOffice in school I was given the response on this thread that it is an add-on to MSOffice ie, it isn't a cloud service in its own right. Google apps has (almost) replaced MSOffice in our school and teachers are loving the collaborative and work anywhere features. Even after you add in the expense of Sharepoint, and cost of MSoffice - the features for individual users in GAPS outweigh those of sharepoint/MSOffice for what we need (teaching yrs 11-18). The marketplace is stronger (even exist in Office365?), more BYOD are supported. Moreover GAPPS is a much more robust service in that Google have much more time and experience with web apps, they have nearly half a billion users on apps already.

 

I can understand that Google apps might not be popular for those who don't like change, especially after they had to go through it once with office 2003->2007. If the change is badly managed, without any training you will be asking for trouble.

[plexer]

Just got my email inviting me to upgrade to 365, wohoo!!!!!!

 

Ben

[edutech4schools]

A link to the Google Apps Market place.

https://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/?pli=1

 

What you see is what you get with live@ and 365 and they are very good but it was not until we had fully used the Google system for a while that you realise how much is hidden away and not obvious. Take this in to account when doing a quick test to see which product you want.

[tj2419]

According to Office 365 Vs Hosted Exchange: The 5 Biggest Differences | Techno Lovers an account is limited to sending 30 messages per minute. Does this mean we wouldn't be able to send the same email to all staff (140ish)?

[PiqueABoo]

No, that is the max number of separate messages sent from a mail client in a minute. In practice you'd address that email to some "All Staff" distribution group - it's just one message.

[tj2419]

No, that is the max number of separate messages sent from a mail client in a minute. In practice you'd address that email to some "All Staff" distribution group - it's just one message.

 

So technically the same message could be sent to a thousand email accounts? Just thinking about emailing parents?

[plexer]

Emailing parents who are outside of the office 365 system is not the same as emailing a disitribution group containing accounts that reside within it.

 

For all staff we use a dynamic distribution list that emails everyone who's org is set to the academy.

 

Ben

[localzuk]

So technically the same message could be sent to a thousand email accounts? Just thinking about emailing parents?

 

If you're going to be emailing parents en-masse, I'd seriously recommend looking at a bulk mailing system instead of using a standard client. That way you can schedule the emails to go out in batches, rather than potentially sending hundreds at once etc...

[PiqueABoo]

If you were to send a mail to 1,500 parent addresses then in principle you can't send another mail from that account to anyone for 24 hours - the recipient rate limit